Plot to Kill Jesus John 11:47-48

over the land. As the consequence, Roman authority should not kill Jesus since they must need him. Following this way of thinking, Jesus, for the Roman authority, is considered not as a threat but as a precious opportunity for the Empire because his teaching and miraculous things make a lot of the Jews follow him. This is what the Jewish authorities might afraid of. The Jewish authorities seem to anticipate this kind of thing. They must worry that their plan to kill Jesus then becomes like a boomerang to themselves. The solution for this matter is to manipulate the accusation toward Jesus. The fact that Jesus endangers the Jewish national identity is manipulated and changed to the fact that Jesus endangers the settlement of the Roman Empire. The “king of the Jews” is attributed to Jesus Matthew 27:11, Mark 15:2, Luke 23:3, John 18:33. This attribution must reveal a threat for the Roman Empire. This brings a meaning that a new government is raising. The raising of a new government indicates an upcoming resistance toward the Emperor. This attribution to Jesus shows the expectation of the Jewish authorities that the Roman authority, which Pilate as the governor in Judea at the time, will take action to prevent such rebellion led by Jesus. They shout to Pilate “Anyone who claims to be a king is a rebel against the Emperor” John 19:12. However, this effort fails at first because Pilate himself, the governor who has authority to sentence someone to be punished, finds no such strong evidence to put Jesus to death. Jesus himself, when asked by Pilate, says that: My kingdom does not belong to this world; if my kingdom belonged to this world, my followers would fight to keep me from being handed over to the Jewish authorities John 18:36. Jesus here wants to affirm that he is a king. However, his kingdom he means here is understood in a spiritual, not a political sense. If it is a political kingdom then there will be a fight to save him like what he says. It can be said that there is no such threat to the Emperor. That is what makes Pilate cannot punish Jesus as Jesus committed no crime. “I cannot find any reason to condemn him” Luke 23:14-15, John 18:38. This statement made by Pilate shows the failure of the Jewish authorities to kill Jesus. The next way the Jewish authorities can take to success their plan is to pretend to be loyal to the Emperor. In John, before the crucifixion of Jesus, Pilate asks the people, “Do you want me to crucify your king?” John 19:15. The chief priest then makes unexpected answer to Pilate, “The only king we have is the Emperor.” John 18:15. The answer of Caiaphas, the high priest, one of the Jewish authorities, shows Pilate that the Roman Emperor is the only one who has authority over the Jewish land. This answer shows an attitude of loyalty to the Roman Emperor as colonizer that the Jewish people are only ruled by the Roman Emperor. As the colonizer, listening to this kind of admission from their colonized people is a very valuable thing. This statement, for Pilate, is a very precious thing from his colonized people. Such a precious loyalty it is. This statement, which is stated on that occasion, plays a very important role to the crucifixion of Jesus. It strengthens and convinces Pilate to put Jesus to death. As the payback of the loyalty, Pilate then takes action to crucify Jesus. Pilate is only a governor in Judea. He is sent there by the Caesar to control the territory. This means that he must obey anything Caesar asks him to do. Colonization itself can be divided into two ways; direct and indirect colonization. Direct colonization is to use military force to control the land, and indirect colonization is to apply the ideology, culture and to please the colonized people. During that time in the Jewish land, Tiberius Caesar applies the indirect way of colonization. One of the ways he does is by giving freedom to the Jews to do their religious activity. The conflict between the Jewish authorities and Jesus, for Pilate, is considered as a religious matter. If he does not take action to punish Jesus, then the Jewish authorities must take action to report it to Caesar. This is also what is expected by the Jews to be taught by the colonizer in order to kill Jesus. The loyalty they make is actually their way of eliminating Jesus. The writer explains the word „loyalty‟ with the adjective „false‟ here to reinforce that the Jewish authorities actually only pretend to be loyal. The loyalty they give to Pilate here is only to please him so he can fulfill what they want even though he himself finds no guilty on Jesus. It is implicitly stated that the more they show that loyalty to Rome, the more the anti-colonial effort is reinforced. What the Jewish authorities do is to defend their Torah and Temple as the representation of their national identity since they give meaning of the nation which the Jews can identify and they also contain and tell the narrative of the Jews as a nation. Hall, Held, Hubert and Thompson argues that the identities which are constructed the national culture are “ambiguously placed between its past and future” Hall,Held,Hubert,Thompson, 1996: 615. This means that the Jewish